with the anodized finish removed the cranks are weaker also.

I have a link to a guy in Austria who re-anodized his stem after polishing.

follow the thread and see how he did it.

https://nyx.at/bikeboard/Board/showth...stral-Reloaded

Question = Will tubular rims/tires make my vintage roadie ride better? What's with the gluing?

Answer = Lose nearly a pound (or more) from your vintage wheelset and you will notice a difference. Gluing = be careful, be neat, read about it first.

Didn't realize it was a Stupid question until recently - upon becoming "a tubular newb", and quickly a believer. And this improvement with closeout Vittoria Rallys. Next wheelset will get fitted with more expensive tubes. Every acceleration feels a little bit easier, handling may be a tad lighter.

Stupid question = would a Shimano 600 Arabesque crankset be anodized? How much weaker without anodizing?

+1 I dropped $13 on Amazon for mine and it has since become indispensable.

My stupid question:

Record brake levers on a french handlebar (Philippe Professionale) - I thought the 23.8 clamp size of the lever fit everything? These wouldn't tighten down enough. I had to jimmy with elec tape. Am I wrong? Is there any part of the bike the French didn't make difficult?

Jesse, the French didn't make bikes difficult, they just made them French! How large is the dia. of the Philippe bar? Why didn't you use a beverage can shim? It won't compress like electrical tape.

A good reason to change 27" rims to 700C is to get the 4 mm extra clearance for mounting fenders -- that's if you don't cause brake reach problems in the process. But the main one is to get a larger selection of tires. It's funny that the bicycle industry has, over time, adopted metric sizing and threading for most items, excepting the bottom bracket. The world would be a slightly more rational place if the Swiss BB had won out too -- go Motobécane!

I think that the reason a lot of frames were fully chromed is because plating is a "dip" process, and if you're going to dip part of the frame it's hardly more work to dip the whole thing. Bianchigirll is right that a lot of the painted chrome area is not polished well enough to be exposed; however, it's a visual thing. Chrome plating on a less polished area is likely to be equally corrosion-resistant as a polished area, or nearly so. What many people don't understand about plating is that the plated substrate generally (always with a really hard metal like chrome) must be polished to the final finish level before plating; there's no going back and bringing a dull or rough chrome finish to a higher gloss level. This polishing takes a lot of work, and adds expense, so manufacturers would only polish the areas where chrome finish would be exposed. In fact, rougher areas would provide a better substrate for paint, anyway. Much of the chrome on bikes was a 3-stage process: plate steel with copper first, then nickel, then chrome -- each metal providing good adhesion to the last, and a softer base for a harder plating. Sometimes only two metals are used, but chrome is not (to my knowledge) deposited directly on steel. There isn't a lot of chrome plating in modern manufacturing because it's environmentally unfriendly, and it's a toxic process for workers; so enjoy what's left of it -- it's both classic and vintage.

If the chain were on the left side, the freewheel (or single sprocket in the days before freewheels existed) would have to be left-hand threaded. Yes I know the left pedal already is, and the right fixed cup often is, but reducing the number of non-standard threaded parts when there was no compelling engineering reason to use them was probably sensible. Note that with freehubs you wouldn't need left-hand threads to put the drive train on the left side. Or was that a stupid answer owing to forgetting something?

I think that they were, though I don't have one here to look at. Anodizing may harden the finish somewhat (this is claimed for rims, or was back in the day), but as far as improving the strength overall of something like a crankset, that is more massive in section than a rim; I seriously doubt that it adds anything.

You put the cone wrench on the cone and the other wrench on the axle nut, and turn them in opposite directions, toward each other, until they're nice and tight.

4- and 5-speed freewheels used 120mm spacing. 6-speed arrived around the early '70s and used 126 mm (actually 126.5). Then around the late '70s 7-speed freewheels that used 126 mm spacing started coming out. The cogs were the same thickness, but spacing between the cogs (and between the smallest cog and the dropout) had decreased. This required a narrower chain that used a "bent" or chamfered inner link.

8-speed freewheels in 130 mm spacing, a technical disaster, followed. Problems were the extreme dishing of the rear wheel and the distance between the drive side bearing and the dropout, leading to bent axles. The cassette hub solved the axle problem by moving the drive side bearing to the outside and the left flange to the inside.

My stupid question: 1. How do you tell if your hubs are Super Record? Is it as obvious as the word "Super Record" being on the hub? My Raleigh Pro and my Tommasini are I believe all Super Record, but the hubs only say Campagnolo Record.
2. How do you put a back wheel on the bike. I always suffer extreme frustration when trying to put the back wheel on. :-) Sorry for the stupid questions. Am I allowed a few more?

Flash

Maybe the tight hub bearings were from the axle rotating while the axle nuts were tightened, that is if it doesn't have a quick-release. Oiled nut threads helps here.

The freehub axle should have been fully removed for a couple of reasons:

Firstly, the drive-side cone may have caused tightness because it rotated with the hubshell and bearings, away from it's locknut. It now would need to be secured tightly against it's locknut to prevent this happening again since you've adjusted it.

Another reason to remove the axle is to check for a cracked ball or bearing cup, both of which are likely when a bearing goes tight like that. The forces were very high!


"I thought the 23.8 clamp size of the lever fit everything? These wouldn't tighten down enough. I had to jimmy with elec tape. Am I wrong? Is there any part of the bike the French didn't make difficult?"

Your bars are smaller diameter not because they are French.
Most steel handlebars are 22.2mm diameter, as on a non-road bike.
The brake levers on road bikes with 22.2mm steel bars will have special clamp bands, usually with stamped size markings.
Tightening levers onto non-metal shims often causes frequent loosening.
Cloth tape would hold up longer than electrical tape though.

As good a place as any:

I couldn't find geometry nor weight nor diameter specs on CAD2 road. I'm curious if Cannondale just reverted to pre 3.0 frame, albeit with double butting or is the post 2.8 (circa 1998) frames really anything different than those classic 1984-1988 frames?

why do i keep seeing threaded headsets on new, albeit cheap, bikes? Seems to me threadless would be cheaper overall

Yes, if you go too heavy and/or leave it on too long. If you use something like aircraft stripper, go easy and use multiple applications. It can leave milky or smoky marks. Same with Rustoleum's rust remover. Leave it on too long, and it discolors. Same with some degreasers on alloy rims. Been there, done all that.

I believe that the only thing that distinguishes SR hubs from Record is the titanium axles -- I've never seen any, but expect that they'd be a gray color rather than blackened steel. Hub shells are exactly the same as Record AFAIK. Meaning, when they're on the bike, with axles completely non-visible, nobody can tell that you spent the extra money, nor that they might break under you! They weren't very popular, because of this. Unless you're on the 160# side of things, you might consider an "upgrade" to steel.

I can't answer your C'dale question but from what I see, the choice of threaded/non-threaded headset corresponds to the style of the bike: The retro/cruiser styles stick with the threaded design because a threadless headset would just look ridiculous.

Another stupid question:
I've observed that grease will often leave a brownish stain on the paint around the perimeter of the bb cups and headset race... Will synthetic grease do the same thing over time?

What kind of rim/hubs are you using? IMHO unless you are using a classic box section rim on a 36 or 32 hole hub you strictly getting performance benifits and not ride comfort.

ax·el   /ˈæksəl/ Show Spelled[ak-suhl] Show IPA
noun Figure Skating .
a jump performed by a skater leaping from the front outer edge of one skate into the air to make 1 1 / 2 rotations of the body and landing on the back outer edge of the other skate.

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I answered my own question. . once I got to my big screen, use a proper PDF reader.

No, the frames differ a bit in geometry (slacker angles, shorter top tubes. . . higher bb, ect), but they weigh about the same (3.4-ish lbs)

in the 80's my Torker BMX came standard with shimano 600 cranks- I vividly remember the BMX ACTION magazine test on the bike- they said that the 600's were wimpy and that they managed to bend them.
I bought the bike and wimpy me did just that - they bent, now a 13 year old kid can bend a new set of 600's, now 30 some years later strip that hard coat off and get a fully grown man on them-

please report your findings, why not try to re-anodize them? its pretty easy to do and think of all the other stuff you can anodize then!

Why don't bicycles have some sort of adjustable steering stop.....so your front brake cable stop on your sidepull brake caliper does not ever slam against your down tube and sometimes end up beating it up. I'm sure someone thought of this, but I bet a few liability experts got int the way......like always
And why are those tiny crimp-on metal cable end caps $0.25 each at PBS??? Why don't they sell them in boxes of a hundred instead, for much less each?
Where did all the clear brake cable casings go that were so comon in the 80's?? Who the heck is hoarding all that stuff??! Porkchop BMX can't possibly have all the supplies of it left in the world!

Chombi

Is there a way to gracefully stop using the leg-swing-over maneuver when wearing clipless pedals? I tried it yesterday and nearly fell. I kept my left foot on the pedal and swung my right leg over the bike and onto the left side of the bike. Right before I stopped, the twist of my body in relation to the bike caused my left foot to unclip. Oops.

The typical person, right handed or not, would mount his noble steed from the left (non drive side) of the horse. Here's a good reason why from Answer.com:

"It is traditional to mount and dismount a horse from the left side the reasoning behind this goes back to when people carried swords, the swords mostly hung on the left hip they couldn't mount a right side because the sword got in the way so became traditional to mount from the left."

I'm sure you can mount a horse from the right, I've never met one but I found it interesting it does have history. And I always mount my bike from the left side, left over lessons from "Old Glue"

Scott

There's a lot of this swashbuckling stuff that runs our "handed" lives. When in Ireland I learned that in castles the spiral stairs all went in one direction (counter-clockwise going up?) so that right-handed defenders working from top down would have the advantage over righties approaching from below. And of course, why the English drive on the left -- to facilitate swordplay between righties en passant.

Not sure I can help you there, Tom -- I have always found that an unstable dismounting manoeuvre myself, too. As a tandem captain I got in the habit of dismounting my end by putting my left foot down at the moment of stopping, then unclipping my right foot and swinging my right leg forward up over my handlebars to come to parade rest on the left side of the bike. This avoids fouling your right leg in the stoker's handlebars or, much worse, kicking her in the face with a steel cleat. I've taken to dismounting single bikes the same way for consistency. But no, I can't dismount gracefully while the bike, single or tandem, is still moving.